Star Wars: The Old Republic, is set thousands of years before Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker, when war between the Old Republic and the Sith Empire raged. Players can choose to play as Jedi, Sith, or a variety of other classic Star Wars roles. Similar to other MMOs, players will be able to define their personal story and decide whether to follow the light or dark side of the Force. Players will be able to choose to team up with friends to battle enemies and overcome huge challenges as a group.

LucasArts president Darrell Rodriguez’s discussed how their goal was to return to the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic franchise stating, “Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is the most critically acclaimed Star Wars game in LucasArts history and a preeminent example of our company’s interactive storytelling heritage, For a long time, we’ve long wanted to return to the franchise in a grand way, and we felt that the best setting for it was an online world that would allow millions of people to participate in the experience together. We knew that the developer capable of working with us to deliver an engrossing story with a fully-realized online world was BioWare."

The game will explore a time frame 300 years after the events of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. This area of Star Wars chronology has been relatively unexplored when compared to the Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker era.

According to Dr. Ray Muzyka, Co-Founder and General Manager/CEO of BioWare, storytelling will help to differentiate this MMO from the rest. He states, "In Star Wars: The Old Republic, we’re fusing BioWare’s heritage of critically-acclaimed storytelling with the amazing pedigree of Lucasfilm and LucasArts”

Similar to Muzyka, Dr. Greg Zeschuk, Co-Founder and Vice President Development Operations of BioWare discussed how this MMO will emphasize innovative story and character development, saying, “BioWare has been able to add to the Star Wars history in developing the game’s story and has created an overarching narrative that players can enjoy, regardless of their play style. Our goal is to offer players an emotionally rewarding experience that combines the traditional elements of MMO gameplay with innovations in story and character development."

Additional details for Star Wars: The Old Republic such as features, gameplay and release date will be announced at a later time.

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From one ex-SWG player to another, I wholeheartedly agree with that statement, but it is true that one can't have a star wars story that is 100% completely devoid of the force. I did find your earlier statement of having NPC Jedi interesting since I did like the Guild Wars experiment w/ NPCs.

It really is difficult to balance Jedi and non-Jedi. Honestly, it all comes down to what to do with the Jedi and Sith classes.

There's been the argument of needing to have them be subject to higher penalties for players casting themselves as higher-risk classes like a Jeedai. Having them implemented from the beginning and as an original part of the system helps a lot more with balance than implementing them later because we all know that future classes are usually OP at first and then power gouged later resulting in a never ending tweak that spreads to every other class and never fixes anything.

Honestly I think we need to get out of the never ending cycle of level based systems since it makes players focus more on getting the next level instead of focusing on the story and the character's impact.

I actually enjoy WoW's story plot but I never actually enjoyed it ingame. It wasn't until I went to the website and actually read the story that I finally got to appreciate it and it really is a good story but all I cared about was "get to the next level, how much xp do i have left, how many quests should i save up and turn in all at once", all day...

In SWG, i wandered around Corellia for an entire month and mastered Marksman, that might not be much of an accomplishment but I had a blast exploring the world, camping out in a tent, and shootin stuf.